Manicures in men are having a moment, with A-list and Gen Z artists showing off their hands in all sorts of quirky colors and designs.
Men wearing nail polish isn't just a trend. Never has been and never will be. It's rooted in thousands of years of history: in 2021, we've seen a lot of men with manicures on the red carpet.
Harry Styles, Tyler the Creator and Machine Gun Kelly all launched nail polish brands within weeks of each other.
But men who take care of their nails didn't appear out of nowhere: going back 30 years, we find Kurt Cobain's chipped red nail polish, or 50 years ago David Bowie's nails. 4,000 years ago however, we can find evidence of ancient Egyptian manicures buried in noble tombs.
What has started to change in this decade is that men don't see their nails as just an accessory, the same way they would consider a watch or necklace. They are also using nails as a way to reject age-old ideas of masculinity, support gender neutrality, and rewrite a new set of rules with a single intent: creative expression and freedom.
We wanted to dig deep into how we went from warriors getting manicures before going into battle to punk rockers sporting black nail polish as a rejection of social norms, and how this ultimately influenced some of hip-hop's biggest artists. today's hop. This is exactly what we did.
Going into battle first required a stop at the beauty salon just like that!!
The first evidence of men taking care of their nails dates back to around 3500 BC, when Babylonian warriors prepared for battle with beauty rituals: "No man of importance would allow himself to be seen in public unless he was beautified", David Yi wrote in his book, Pretty Boys: Legendary Icons Who Refined Beauty, talking about finds during an excavation in the ancient Mesopotamian city of Ur. “Warriors adorned their fingernails with ground minerals as part of a pre-battle ritual designed to intimidate their enemies”, according to a 2018 article from the University of Rochester Medical Center.
The Egyptians also had their own manicure
There are also early indications of ancient Egyptian men taking care of their hands and feet. "A number of elite tomb chapels from the Old Kingdom (c. 2575–2150 BC) include scenes of men receiving nail treatments", Elizabeth Frood, associate professor of Egyptology at the University of Oxford, told POPSUGAR.
In the Old Kingdom there were numerous titles (roles) related to the care of the king's body, including that of manicurist. In all these scenes showing manicurists, it is the men who receive and give the treatments. “Considering the might and power of the royal body, individuals capable of touching it and transforming its body must have had extremely high status simply through their ability to perform these actions”, Frood explained. “Their status is also indicated by the fact that some have monumental and richly decorated tombs.”
As with many things in ancient Egypt, nails were also decorated for the afterlife.
Small golden caps were placed on the fingers and toes, "however this is less about the exposure of the nails in particular, and more about the overall transformation and divination of the body", Frood added.
The two most famous royal manicurists of the Old Kingdom were Niankhkhnum and Khnumhotep, who were most likely brothers (perhaps twins or perhaps lovers) and shared a tomb complex in Saqqara. “The displays of intimacy between them also led to suggestions that they may have been a gay couple, and thus their story entered LGBTQ+ discourses in the ancient world,” said Frood, which Professor Richard Parkinson explains further in A Little Gay History. : Desire and diversity in the world.
These Old Kingdom scenes of grooming and performance of manicurist roles largely disappear from later periods of ancient Egypt, which in itself represents an interesting development for Frood. “I am sure that these practices have retained their importance, as evidenced by the care to depict elite individuals with neatly trimmed fingernails and toenails on their statues and in two-dimensional representations – also a likely indicator of status”, has explained.
The scribes of the New Kingdom took pride in their soft, delicate limbs and hands.
The Ming Dynasty invented the first gel extensions
The ancient Egyptians focused on detailed nail care. Further east, however, men focused on extreme nail length, a practice that originated in the Ming Dynasty but became popular during the Qing Dynasty.
Extreme nail length and guards were used to signal elite status, as they were "a clear indicator that he did not perform any manual labor," explained author Suzanne E. Shapiro Nails: A Story of the Modern Manicure .
History shows us that in the ancient world, nail and foot care were part of men's general grooming routine; it helped them display their wealth, strength or status.
We have been able to gather little information about male nail care habits beyond ancient times (perhaps the result of colonialism and Western Europe's growing influence on the world)..
When people began to beautify their nails again in 1900, the focus was mainly on women. Men simply helped women achieve these new standards of beauty, whether through new inventions or through the creation and marketing of beauty brands.
The boom of Polish red which, however, has not convinced everyoneti
Fast forward to the 1930s, and the history of male attitudes towards nail care was very different, with the focus predominantly on men helping women use beauty to improve their appearance over their own.
There was a great wave of anxiety about women being seen as lower class if their cuticles were not looked after; and many new products on the market have helped to "alleviate" these concerns and maintain this standard.
At the same time, brothers Charles and Joseph Revson, along with chemist Charles Lachman, developed Revlon's first cream nail polish, made with pigment rather than dye, allowing the polish to be completely opaque.
Revlon created a variety of colors (and before Revlon, dye-based nail polishes came in a variety of shades), but the biggest nail color trend of the 1930s was undoubtedly red. But as reported in Nails: A Story of the Modern Manicure, it seems many men weren't thrilled with the boom in bright red nail polish. . “For the love of God, do something about the bright red nail polish. We really wish you would throw the damn stuff in the ocean.”, said one college student in a 1935 survey.
For men in the first half of the 20th century, the pressure and attention was on the woman in their lives who upheld certain standards of beauty (and nails)..
Vietnamese-owned salons have created a new model of accessibility for all
The attitude that nail care outside the home was reserved for the upper classes has changed with a group of Vietnamese women and the help of an unlikely star: Tippi Hedren.
As part of her philanthropic efforts, the Hollywood actress visited a Vietnamese refugee camp in California in 1975 and was determined to find vocations for the women in the camp. Hedren recalled that women were fascinated by her manicured nails, so she decided to teach the craft to a group of 20 refugee women.
Today, the nail industry in the United States is dominated by Vietnamese Americans who have carved out lucrative careers as nail salon owners. These salons have forever changed the way both women and men access and enjoy nail art in the United States and around the world.
The 70s and 80s laid the foundation for the menicure
It was in the '70s and '80s that we finally started seeing men paint their nails again, and a lot of it had to do with the music and counter-cultural movements of the time, from punk rock to the New Romantic movement. With the punk rock scene's unisex approach to beauty and clothing, "it was the experimental and liberal attitude towards fashion that allowed nail art to take hold in the 1970s," according to Nails: A Story of the Modern Manicure..”
Musicians Lou Reed, Iggy Pop and Robert Smith have all sported nails painted with jet black as a colour. Often the paint was chipped because perfection didn't matter here, visibility mattered.
Unlike today, these men didn't care about specific manicures or nail art. The important thing was first of all that the man wore nail polish. One look at Adam Ant, Freddie Mercury and Prince was all the proof people needed at the time to understand that nail polish wasn't meant to be reserved for women.
David Bowie took it a step further by experimenting with nails a tip, a bold move at the time. Bowie was the Godfather of experimentation, serving as an especially important icon for men when it came to breaking free from society's binary beauty conventions.
In recent decades, music has been an integral part of young people's identity and often a form of rebellion against the lifestyle of their parents and grandparents. Nail polish was one aspect that gave men an extension to display this newfound, often rebellious identity.
The 90s were a look at what was to come
Punk gave way to grunge in the '90s, but rock musicians continued to sport nail polish as a way to rage against society. Indeed, during this period, men's manicure became more deliberate and color palettes broadened: Nirvana's Kurt Cobain wore red nail polish, Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder preferred metallic shades, and Billie Joe Armstrong loved mixing and matching different shades. One thing that hasn't changed Chipped nail polish still reigned supreme..
The 90s are the period where we see a clear fusion of the punk influences of the 70s with this new era of experimentation. It not only serves as a clear indication of what was to come in the 2000s and beyond, but also demonstrates that the modern man's manicure did not emerge from nowhere.
Rappers entered the world of Nail Art and changed fashion
Male rappers and songwriters entered the world of manicures in the 2010s, and the world of nail art has changed forever, not to mention a much more creative world. Lil Yachty, A$AP Rocky, Lil Nas
Compared to the 70s, 80s and 90s, manicures are much more deliberate, these artists often work with highly trained nail technicians to bring their visions to life. “It wasn't often you see hip hop or rap artists enter the conversation”, Slydell said. "We've seen rock stars wear nail polish, we've seen Harry Styles break out of the norm of what we've been taught, but it's not often we see hip hop artists who have used their platform to make a statement," he said. Added.
The modern men's manicure is redefined
With criticism comes change, and social media has been crucial for many artists sharing and influencing others to use nail art as a tool for self-expression and, in turn, breaking down gender stereotypes.
“Just like in the 1970s, gender-based fashion and beauty standards are obsolete [in the 1920s]”, said Brittney Boyce, celebrity nail artist and founder of Nails of LA. In addition to the rappers mentioned above, Harry Styles, Machine Gun Kelly, Pete Davidson, Post Malone and J-Hope all wear nail polish regularly. This very public experimentation by celebrities has undoubtedly influenced a wave of fans who sport a glossy manicure in everyday life.i.
Men's manicure equals big business
The evolution of men wearing and experimenting with beauty treatments (and nail polish in particular) has opened up a whole new world of opportunities within a £27 billion industry (UK alone). Lil Yachty debuted a nail polish brand Crete (though he is no longer associated with the brand), after learning that a 17-year-old was suspended from a Texas school for wearing nail polish.
Most recently, Harry Styles founded the nail polish and skin care brand Pleasing, MGK launched his nail brand UN/DN LAQR, and Tyler, the Creator, launched Golf le Fleur, a beauty and accessories that sells nail polish, perfume and more.
Pete Davidson and MGK starred together in a Calvin Klein commercial where the two did their nails. “If you look at it from a monetary perspective, more and more companies, more men, more male-backed investors are going to look at this industry through a new lens that they haven't seen before.”, Slydell said.
Now there is only one thing left to talk about: which shade you will choose?
